It is common in the prior art to drive electric household appliances, such as for example electric toothbrushes and shavers, by a rotating electric motor. However, it turns out that under certain conditions the noise emission by the rotating electric motor exceeds what is considered a level of comfort for a user. Accordingly there are multiple efforts in the prior art for a replacement of a rotating electric motor by a linear electric motor. However, a linear motor having an armature being movable with respect to the housing and a stator being mounted to the housing can lead to a transfer of oscillations to the housing. These transferred oscillations can strongly influence the feeling the user has when using the device.
An arrangement is known wherein the stator is not rigidly mounted to the housing. In this arrangement, the stator is elastically mounted to the housing by a spring and therefore movable with respect to the housing. The stator and the armature are coupled by a further spring such that the stator and the armature oscillate with a 180 degrees phase shift. Therefore in principle a reduction in the transfer of oscillations to the housing is achieved. However, in order to obtain a sufficient momentum transfer for the armature, the spring coupling the stator to the housing may have a fairly high spring constant. Because of the fairly high spring constant, substantial transfer of vibrations to the housing can occur. In general linear motors are discussed in WO 2005/062445 A1.